Posing as Georgians who fled their home country with sensitive information about the government, Mogelson and a Dutch photographer colleague, Joel van Houdtm paid US$4,000 (A$4,300) each to be taken from Indonesia to Christmas Island.

The Afghanistan-based reporters arranged the transfer before arriving in Jakarta.

"It's surprisingly simple, from Kabul, to enlist the services of the smugglers Australian authorities are so keen to apprehend," Mogelson wrote.

They shared the boat with two Indonesian crew, an Afghan man and 54 Iranians including nine children and more than a dozen women, one of whom was seven months pregnant."The Indonesians distributed life vests: ridiculous things made from thin fabric and a bit of foam," Mogelson wrote.

Within hours of setting off most aboard were vomiting, he wrote.

Would-be travellers had not been put off by Australia's deterrence measures, including billboard advertisements in their home countries that Australia was not settling asylum seekers.

"It's a lie to scare people so that they don't come," one man told Mogelson.

"How can they turn you away?" asked another. "You put yourself in danger, you take your life in your hand? They can't."

The boat travelled no faster than five knots. "At times we seemed to make no headway whatsoever against the strong south-easterly trade winds, which whipped up white caps on the waves and kept us all alert with stinging gusts of spray."

Conditions on board were sickening. "There was no toilet and absent any railing to hold on to, going over the side was too risky. The men urinated on the hull, the women in their pants," Mogelson wrote.

Upon nearing Christmas Island a crew member used a satellite phone to call Australian authorities for help before passengers destroyed passports and identity documents and threw mobile phones overboard.

Australian sailors subsequently arrived, distributing new life vests, fresh water, bags of frozen tortillas, jars of honey and a tub of strawberry jam. They instructed the crew to restart the boat's engines and continue the voyage under escort.

Arriving one day after Tony Abbott's election as prime minister, Mogelson said he and Van Houdt revealed themselves as journalists and were treated well by Australian authorities who said they had been lucky with the weather. "If we had left a few days earlier the boat would have capsized."

As the two men were taken to "a surprisingly luxurious hotel" their travel companions were interned and the boat was towed out to sea to be destroyed.